Th’ athletic fool, to whom what heav’n deny’d Of soul is well compensated in limbs, Oft from his rage, or brainless frolic, feels 205 His vegetation and brute force decay. The men of better clay and finer mould Know nature, feel the human dignity; And scorn to vie with oxen or with apes. Pursued prolixly, even the gentlest toil 210 Is waste of health: Repose by small fatigue Is earn’d; and (where your habit is not prone To thaw) by the first moisture of the brows. The fine and subtle spirits cost too much To be profus’d, too much the roscid balm. 215 But when the hard varieties of life You toil to learn; or try the dusty chace, Or the warm deeds of some important day: Hot from the field, indulge not yet your limbs In wish’d repose, nor court the fanning gale, 220 Nor taste the spring. O! by the sacred tears Of widows, orphans, mothers, sisters, sires, Forbear! No other pestilence has driven Such myriads o’er th’ irremeable deep. Why this so fatal, the sagacious muse 225 Thro’ nature’s cunning labyrinths could trace: But there are secrets which who knows not now, Must, ere he reach them, climb the heapy Alps Of science; and devote seven years to toil. Besides, I would not stun your patient ears 230 With what it little boots you to attain. He knows enough, the mariner, who knows Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools boil, What signs portend the storm: To subtler minds He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause 235 Charybdis rages in th’ Ionian wave; Whence those impetuous currents in the main, Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why The roughning deep expects the storm, as sure As red Orion mounts the shrowded heaven. 240